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Lynching in America : a history in documents

Presents a portrait of lynching demonstrating that it has been anything but one-dimensional. From the American Revolution to the expansion of the western frontier, the book shows how communities defended lynching as a way to maintain law and order. This book documents lynching offering accounts of lynchings, explanations, excuses, and criticism.Read more...

Introduction : explanations --
The first lynchers --
Jacksonian America --
Slavery --
How the West was won? --
Civil War and Reconstruction --
The gilded age : shall the wheel of race agitation be stopped? --
State sovereignty and mob law --
Western lynching in an industrializing age --
The limits of progressive reform --
Federal law against mob law --
The new deal --
High-tech lynchings.

Reviews

Editorial reviews

Publisher Synopsis

";Christopher Waldrep has examined in depth a history we prefer to ignore-a not so distant time when Americans descended into vigilante justice and public displays of ritualistic murder, often targeting people of color. The testimony gathered for this collection is a sobering reminder that terrorism has deep roots in our own soil, that it is part of our history, part of our heritage."-Leon Litwack,author of Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery "An exemplar documentary history....While lynching might seem to be a tarnished relic of an unfortunate earlier part of history, Waldreps sobering texts remind us of the timelessness of unrestrained power of community-based extra-legal violence."-Louisiana History ";Christopher Waldrep's heart-wrenching but compelling documentary collection on American lynching traditions could not appear at a more fitting time. In Waldrep's carefully selected documents, we are forced to confront the grim record of American racial violence. The testimony given by blacks themselves in public hearings and in African-American newspapers proves to be especially dramatic and horrifying. Lynching in America should be read not just by historians, who so long neglected the topic. Rather, all those concerned to promote our better natures could benefit from pondering these past atrocities so skillfully laid before us."-Bertram Wyatt-Brown,author of Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South "Christopher Waldrep's volume should quickly become one of a handful of standard reference works on the subject of lynching. His knowledge of the literature on lynching is masterful and far ranging. Lynching in America is an important book."-Thomas H. Appleton, Jr.,Eastern Kentucky University "A distinct work."-Choice, RecommendedRead more...